Mark Albrighton

If we bring in another half a dozen players, it’ll mean around five of those names above aren’t going to be in the squad (it’s still 25 players for a top flight squad, right?). The ones from that lot whom I’m expecting won’t be in the squad one way or another are Kalinic, Bree, Thor, Tshibola, RHM and Hogan. Probably Nyland too, although I feel like Kalinic is closer to the exit door.

So hypothetically, if it took me 16 minutes to eventually drive round to the ticket barrier thing to leave...what would happen? Get told that I have to pay for another hour or something?

I said the exact same thing the other night while in bed with Katy Perry.

When you’ve parked in a car park where you pay when you’re ready to leave, at one of those machines on the way back to your car....how quickly do you have to get in your car and get out of the car park before incurring some additional cost?

Until recently I used to be mildly irritated about the constant churning out of marvel films. I don’t mind it now, still don’t really watch them but I’m indifferent to them. Some bits I’ve seen have been decent Hollywood entertainment. I have a grudging admiration for how they’ve methodically gone about it, which only looks more impressive when you see how much of a balls up DC appear to have made of their franchise.

Welcome Matt. 9/10 for the amusing tweet. You lost a point for typing “Would of” instead “Would have”.

I haven’t been keeping a close eye on this, but I kinda had the impression Palace were looking for around double that? Isn’t he their star player by quite some distance? I think there’s a sell on clause that Man Utd benefit from, which I guess would influence the price.

Bit of a cop out but if I knew the answer was going to be 80+ years or something like that, then yeah I think I would be tempted to find out. Get my affairs in order/have an Anna Nicole Smith style marriage before checking out.

You’ve been watching Logan’s Run again, haven’t you?

That was a fairly revealing top.

Apparently Targett has had his medical, according to my mate currently doing the villa park tour.

I would describe it as either a very big village or a very small town....they seem to be sticking thousands of houses there so it’s expanding. Probably due to it’s relative closeness to Telford. Not as picturesque as, say, Ironbridge or Much Wenlock, but it’s decent and convenient. Quite a few pubs, we were in 5 of them last night, but could have chosen from 3 or 4 more. As such I feel terrible and will spend the day recovering. Managed to get drunk enough to pluck up the courage to ask for a woman’s number though, so will spend some of the day contemplating how I will now proceed in making an idiot out of myself.

We’re operating in a market where Man Utd are paying £50m for a right back with a single season under his belt. I’m not getting too hung up on £14m - £17m.

Fulham supposedly tried to buy him for £15m last year, Southampton apparently wanted £20m. Not dissimilar to the Mings situation we appear to find ourselves in now. So inflated all these prices may be, but they’re at least pretty consistent, it suggests the numbers aren’t too ridiculous.

Now that is a surprising revelation about, well I assume, Martine.

Maybe if he felt that Reo-Coker was particularly asking for it that day he’d be inclined

Birthday beers tomorrow in Shifnal with a couple of mates. Nothing too crazy - have a bigger get together planned for next weekend, a joint birthday thing with another mate (really just an excuse to go out, catch up and have a few drinks). Tomorrow will be the warm up. Sunday, recover and maybe paint a few doors/other jobs around the house.

In reality I don’t think people are as far apart in their views on Bruce as they appear. I think most agree he did some good here, pretty much everyone agrees he got a fair bit wrong. The nuances of it all are where there’s an issue. The signings under his tenure were hit and miss (putting it simply I make it about 12 “good” ones and 10 “bad” ones....there is some wiggle room for either side). If a few of the bad/seemingly unnecessary signings didn’t cost so much and Bruce hadn’t pleaded poverty at every available opportunity, people wouldn’t be as quick to criticise him. As for results, it’s not that surprising to see his time here divides opinion, the form we had under him was very Jekyll and Hyde. You can look at the results in order and see, first 12 games in charge brought in 24 points, the following 9 brought 2 points. The 8 games after that we won 7 and lost once, followed by a stuttering end to the season after that promising run. That was just the first 6 or so months. The following season had similar all or nothing patches of form. Unfortunately the start of the season just gone, Mr Hyde was very much in charge. I have the impression he’s well thought of at Hull and Small heath - probably a bit less so now at sha. He’s not well thought of at Villa & Sunderland. The other clubs he’s managed, I don’t know, probably not there long enough to have a good idea. It’ll be interesting to see where on the appreciation spectrum he ends up for Wednesday.

From the limited amount of research I’ve done, he appears to be the one who was most successful, by a fair distance. I was really just on about the most recent former manager who has had a bit of glory after leaving us.

Only found out today that there’s a completely different ending to “little shop of horrors” to the one I watched as a kid. It’s shaken my world view.

Not really. If you went further and asked who was the last Villa manager who left us and went on to have genuine, tangible success elsewhere, it’s even more of a struggle. Tommy Docherty maybe? Won the FA cup in 1977 with Man Utd after leaving us (admittedly he had been relegated with Man Utd before the cup win).

Yep confirmed by Forest.

Just skimmed through this thread and I can’t see any mention of “The Day of the Jackal”. Fantastic film.

Ah memories, like the corners of my mind.